Hi there! It’s time for another fabulous My Monthly Hero release from Hero Arts! This month, we’re going under the sea with beautiful mermaids, jellyfish, and all kinds of oceanic beauty. We are hopping along to share all of the new products with you. You should have arrived here from Debi Adams, and your next stop is Ilina Crouse. Here’s a peek at this month’s kit:
This month’s kit includes: 6″ x 8″ Clear Stamp Set, 8 Coordinating Frame Cuts, Mermaid Reactive Palette Ink Pad, Self-adhesive Pearl Gems, Water Flow Brush. Individually, the products would retail for over $70, but the kit is available for only $34.99! These kits sell out frequently very quickly, so you can make sure to receive one each month by subscribing here. I have two projects to share with you today, so let’s get started with the details!
I began by heat embossing several of the undersea images from the new My Monthly Hero kit using Moonstone pigment ink and heat embossing them with White Satin Pearl embossing powder to create a pearlescent charcoal finished look. I embossed all of the images on white cardstock, then used blending brushes and several different shades of ink to create a beautifully ethereal and mottled look for the coral, plants, jellyfish, and seashells. I tried to capture the light dancing through from the top of the water to create movement and color variation with the ink blending. I die cut the blended images with the coordinating dies included in the kit.
Next, I trimmed down a panel of Adriatic cardstock to A2 size and blended some Deep Ocean ink around the edges of the card base. I splattered some sparkling metallic watercolors from my stash that had green and blue glitter over the blended card base to add even more magical sparkle to the card front. I also trimmed by hand some “sand” using scissors and some silver glitter paper, which I popped up using foam tape on the bottom of my blended card front to create a ground for my little underwater scene.
I arranged the blended die cuts on my ocean floor, adhering them with both liquid adhesive and foam tape, then silver embossed a sentiment from the main kit on a small strip of Adriatic cardstock. To make sure that the pearl in the sentiment was super visible, I dabbed a drop of the new White Hero Pearls in the center of the clam, and I made sure that the white of the pearl was the only white on my card front! The final touch was to add some shimmer to a few of the die cut elements with my shimmer pen, mainly some of the coral and the jellyfish, just to add even more textural interest to the card front.
For my second project, I used a couple of the add-ons to create this colorful underwater scene! I used a similar concept to the first card, allowing colorful ink blending and colored cardstock to convey the blue light that you see below the surface of the ocean. I began by heat embossing images from Mermaid Wishes and Mermaid Cove on some Arctic cardstock using Moonstone pigment ink and heat embossing them with White Satin Pearl embossing powder to create a pearlescent charcoal finished look. I cut the images out with my sharp scissors, then used several different colors of ink to blend on the embossed images to add lots of interest and color to the images. I then added a bit of sparkle to the underwater foliage with some colorful sparkle pens.
For the card base, I trimmed down an A2 Arctic card base, then blended colors from the Tropical Waters Ink Cube set around the edge. I also used Copic markers to add some deep blues and purples to the mermaid’s hair, as well as some sparkle to her fishy friend using more sparkle pens. The sparkle pens blend together similar to watercolors; you can lay down some colorful sparkle, then use the colorless sparkle pen to pull the color out and blend it into an ombré.
I adhered all of the colorful die cut pieces to the blended card base with lots of foam tape, some with double layer of foam tape to add lots of height and dimension. The colorful cardstock base used for all of the die cuts helps to maintain the flow and feel of the underwater scene from one die cut piece to the other.
Well, that’s all for my projects today! To celebrate this release, Hero Arts is giving away a $50 shopping spree to the Hero Arts website. All you have to do to enter is leave comments along the hop. The more comments you leave, the more chances you have to win! Enter by Sunday, June 12th at 11:59pm Pacific, and the winner will be announced on the Hero Arts blog the following week.
Your next stop on the hop is Ilina Crouse. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and happy hopping!
